Leading Moroccan Salafi Figure secretly calls upon his followers to vote for the PAM party

Rabat, Morocco (TMT)- In the wake of ongoing speculations in Moroccan news outlets about the reopening of around 60 Quranic schools in Morocco, schools belonging to the well-known Moroccan Salafi cleric Abderrahman Al Maghraoui, secret audio recordings show him talking to his followers, calling them to vote for the Party of Authenticity and Modernity (PAM), hinting out in the meantime that it is thanks to the PAM that his Quranic schools have reopened.

“You will betray us and betray the Quran” if you don’t vote for those who opened the Quranic schools, Al Maghraoui, the head of the Association Da‘wah to the Quran and the honorable Sunna (الدعوة إلى القرآن والسنة المشرفة), is caught telling his followers.

Al Maghraoui is also heard saying, “I asked Benkirane [the secretary general of the PJD party] many times for his help [to re-open the Quranic schools].

“I contacted him 3 times, Benkirane, and I even went to his house,” Al Maghraoui stressed, before adding that Benkirane turned his back to him.

The Moroccan authorities shut down Al Maghraoui’s Quranic schools in 2010 after he sought to legalize pedophilia, undermining Morocco’s penal code when decreeing a fatwa allowing girls as young as nine to marry.

Morocco’s High Council of Ulemas (religious scientists) issued a statement back-then against Al Maghraoui’s “utilization of religion to legitimize the marriage of nine-year-old girls.”